The present invention relates generally to an information processing apparatus and method, a program, and a recording medium and, more particularly, to an information processing apparatus and method, a program, and a recording medium which securely download software to update software affected by an abnormal end for example of the information processing apparatus.
When an abnormal end occurs on information processing apparatuses such as personal computers, they must be restarted by use of the backup data which were saved in advance; however, this operation possibly involves a discrepancy between the downloaded software for use in updating the software of abnormally ended information processing apparatuses and their backup data. In order to solve this problem, technologies have been developed in which, at the downloading of software, the storage area which was active when an abnormal end took place is switched to the other storage area in the information processing apparatus and, after the downloading, it is started up by use of this other storage area. Technologies have also been proposed in which the software to be downloaded is divided into a plurality of blocks and checksum calculation is executed only on the sending side to reduce software download time (for example, patent document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 09-16404).
However, these related-art technologies do not consider the case in which an abnormal end occurred on information processing apparatuses while the software is being downloaded. Also, these related-art technologies do not provide a method of quickly and correctly checking to see whether the software downloading has normally ended.